Do what you’re told

Islam does judge actions. It tells Muslims that homosexuality is wrong, that stealing is wrong, that killing is wrong and that judging others is also wrong. But nowhere does it say that a homosexual or a thief or a murderer should be treated as anything less than a human being. What Muslims have done is mix the Islamic condemnation of actions with the person who has carried them out. This creates hatred and animosity – two feelings that Islam condemns.

Homosexuality is ‘wrong’ the way stealing is wrong and killing is wrong, because Islam ‘tells Muslims’ so. If Islam ‘tells Muslims’ that eating peaches, watching sunsets, sneezing, and reading poetry are wrong, will that mean they are wrong? Is it possible to have better reasons for thinking something is either wrong or not wrong than the fact that Islam ‘tells Muslims’ so? Would it be helpful if something told Abdurrahman al-Shayyal that treating homosexuality as comparable to murder is wrong? Would it be useful if something gave him the idea that command morality is only as good as the commands are?

32 Responses to “Do what you’re told”

You’re a little too generous, OB – although only in passing, by way of a nice rhetorical turn of phrase: “Would it be useful if something gave him the idea that command morality is only as good as the commands are?”

Thing is, command morality is NOT only as good as the commands are – it’s not even as good as the commands are. Good commands are, after all, still commands; and obedience to commands is still an incredibly inane and foolish way to go about making moral judgments – or any kind of judgment, for that matter.

The core ideology of Islam – the very name of which translates best as ‘submission,’ its adherents claim with foolish pride – is inherently and exactly opposed to everything sensible people ought to value: freedom of thought and action, guided and constrained by sound reasoning, publicly-available evidence, and rationally defensible ethical principles.

Okay, maybe that’s not the sum total of everything sensible people ought to value. But it’s the best, pithiest summary I could conjure right now.

And, lest a random accusation of “Islamophobia” somehow leak into the B&W comments section from the Grauniad’s, let me point out that any and every religious tradition is directly opposed to those same core sensible values to the extent that it relies upon and encourages FAITH as a way of deciding what to believe and how to act.

Is that so? What about St. Mary Magdalen? Catholic Encyclopaedia says,

Mary Magdalen was so called either from Magdala near Tiberias, on the west shore of Galilee, or possibly from a Talmudic expression meaning “Curling women’s hair,” which the Talmud explains as of an adulteress. Wiki: “She is by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches considered to be a saint, with a feast day of July 22. The Lutheran Church with a festival also commemorates her on the same day.” In holy Roman Catholic Ireland Mary Magdalen has always been synonymous with fallen women. “The woman who has never known the pollution of a single wicked thought – the woman whose virgin bosom has never been crossed by the shadow of a thought of sin! – the woman breathing purity, innocence and grace, receives the woman whose breath is the pestilence of hell!” [Catriona Clear, Nuns in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, p.153; cited from Finnegan, p.20]”

The women who graced these laundries with their puny, in disfavour, contaminated adulterated tainted presence are still to this day seeking justice from the Irish State. They know what it is like to live in a melancholic discontented iniquitous world. They did not have to gain knowledge of how to read to find out how merciless, and pitiful the world was – they, like the fallen, by default, Goldenbridge children witnessed it every single day of their lives. Some unpolluted people find it hard to befriend people like them/us as they would still consider them/us as “damaged goods”.

“The Prophet Muhammad once told the story of a prostitute who went to heaven for saving a dog that was dying of thirst. Prostitution is forbidden in Islam and dogs aren’t the most liked of creatures,”I

If Islam dogs according to the story are not the most liked creatures – why then, did the prostitute go to heaven, for saving one? Is it, ‘hate the sin but not the sinner?’

Take it easy, guys. At least Richard is prepared to engage and is open to persuasion.

As G points out, the issue is command morality. And yet again we are right back to Plato & Socrates. Does god command what is right because it is right, or is it right because god commands it?

Abdurrahman al-Shayyal is probably a very nice guy who, like many christian liberals, would like to square the circle and make his religion compatible with his own sense of what is morally right.

But he is running into the same brick wall; if the texts are the revealed word of god, then one’s moral abhorrence at what they command must place one at variance with the infinite authority who does not give a tinker’s cuss for one’s liberal sensibilities. If they are not, what are they?

True, G, I gave too much away – though I suppose I could defend myself by pointing out that the problem with command morality is implicit in what I said: command morality is only as good as the commands are when judged by standards indpendent of the commander. But I won’t bother, I’ll just cop to it.

“Homosexuality is ‘wrong’ the way stealing is wrong and killing is wrong, because Islam ‘tells Muslims’ so.”

They are, seemingly, from all different religious persuasions at the same condemnation lark. Sinner Casts Stone: Alexy II, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church recently made a speech before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe denouncing homosexuality as “an illness” and a “distortion of the human personality, like kleptomania.” He also claimed that homosexuality is part of “a new generation of rights that contradict morality, and [an example of] how human rights are used to justify immoral behaviour.”

As Jesus purportedly said, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” I wonder did they start stoning women from there on in?

The following statement is a reaffirmation of the Pope’s reputation for traditional Catholic values. “One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies,” said a statement on the Vatican’s website.

The church says practising homosexuals, men with deep-seated homosexual tendencies and those who support gay culture are not allowed to become priests. Even the Anglican Church has a one upmanship on this subject.

“You might as well say being left-handed is immoral,”

Alas, a “cuiteog” (left-handed) [earthworm] person was until recent times vilified in Ireland. Children for example in Goldenbridge who dared to write with left hand were severely beaten. Cuiteog’s were albeit doing the devil’s work and were evil.

Good god. I think you’ve said that somewhere, it might even be in one of your articles, but I’d forgotten. I knew left-handedness was sinister, of course (‘sinister’ literally means left-handed) but I didn’t know it was devilish. Or I did, but I’d forgotten.

“nowhere does it say that a homosexual or a thief or a murderer should be treated as anything less than a human being”. Well, it all depends on the treatment you’re ready to apply to a human being under certain circumstances. For one, properly speaking, you can torture, hang and stone a human being, hardly a peach tree or an amoeba. In this sense, it’d probably have been better if he had said that homosexuals are not less than an amoeba.

Well, it all depends on the treatment you’re ready to apply to a human being under certain circumstances.

Yes, that’s what often shocks me about ‘moderate’ muslims. Accused, say, of claiming that imams should have the power to execute apostates they look horrified and offended, then patiently explain that this is not what they think at all! What they said – what has been cruelly and maliciously twisted by the islamophobic press – was that in an islamic state the imam who is the head of the religious state should have the power to kill apostates. And even then execution is only one of the possible punishments – he (do we have female imams yet? imamettes?) might choose, say, banishment or cutting-off-of-hands instead. See? Not brutal or immoderate at all!

On the subject of left-handedness, the truly evil trick is oven gloves. Perfectly ambidextrous to look at, yet all too often the evil righty conspiracy put the heat-resistant material only on the face that will protect a right-handed person! My hands are a burned mess of scar tissue thanks to this evil plot.

sorry – in earlier comment about doors and left-handedness, I should have been more explicit – it’s not the case now, but in many old houses, etc, you’ll often find the cupboard door handles are positioned to make opening the door simpler for a right-hander – don’t have to reach across their body, less risk of “door-in-face”, etc.

Perhaps an updated version of castle spiral staircases favouring the defenders? :-) in case anyone’s interested (!), castles owned by the predominantly-lefty Kerr family usually had “left-handed” staircases.

I still don’t get it. Doors and staircases go both ways – if stairways are for lefties when you go up, they’re for righties when you go down, no? If a door has a handle on the right on one side, it has it on the left on the other side.

Spiral staircases usually meant that those going up (attackers) had their right (sword) arm hindered by the wall. Those coming down had their right arm free.

But if the defenders are primarily left handed, then both sides are hindered.

Reverse the staircase and left handed defenders free up their sword arms, but also free up the attackers right arm. So both sides are advantaged.

The only way it would give a defence advantage is if the attackers were also Kerr-handed (kaa handed, as the current dialect has it).

I just spent several minutes walking through my house turning door handles with alternate hands. I’m pretty sure they are ambidextrous and that my family are mildly concerned about my mental well being. But those are lever handles. Knob type handles that you twist may well be different. I’ll continue the field research and report back.

But I too recall the days when writing with your left hand earned a crack over the knuckles with a metal ruler. But then so did pretty much everything.

(Personally, I’m having my staircase designed by Escher. That will confuse the bastards.)

OK, I’m in my living room and the door to the hallway has a left pointing lever handle, which is comfortable for my left hand. The door to the household passage way has a right pointing handle and is comfortable to my right hand. Reverse positions and the comfort factor remains. So lever handles are ambidextrous.

But twisty knob handles are turned anti-clockwise to open, does this present a problem to lefties? In terms of wrist action?

Hm, I know the thread’s gone very much off topic and irrelevant, but (especially covert and unannounced) prudish censorship still seems rather dodgy – especially in this mature liberal forum.

I’d have thought we were all grown up enough to handle the odd bit of silly Carry On humour – especially when the posts concerned were actually making points that were relevant to the (off-original-topic) discussion.

Editing posts (with an announcement of the editing) to avoid legal liability is one thing; removing an entire off-topic discussion, too, might make sense (again with an announcement of what has been done and why; though such aditing would seem unnecessary really). Creeping mimsily around, silently pruning here and there to eliminate any hint of impropriety? Bad call!

Outeast that is not really fair the space taken up by posts has to be paid for!so editing is a necesity (even if it means the removal of my pearls of wisdom) this sort of thing is always in the eye of the beholder so however you edit it will cause upset.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Yeah, as Richard says, the comments cost money, and if I’m not particularly enthralled by a long digression on doorknobs, I’m damn well going to delete it. I’m not ‘creeping mimsily around’ – I’m removing stuff that I find boring, irrelevant, and pointless. I certainly don’t eliminate every hint of impropriety! (And as a matter of fact, Marie-Therese asked me to delete her post, which is probably the one referred to.) And when I prune, of course I do it silently! What do you want, an announcement?!

Jeezis. Demanding commenters – how annoying they can be. You’d think this was a public library.